4 Things You Should Know About Conflict

By Sam Lewis:

For most of my career I have been either an HR manager in a factory or a factory manager or the VP of Engineering. Now I own a staffing agency. I interact daily with my clients, businesses, and with our employees. I see my current job as sales but the overall function is relationship building. Because people will not do business with someone they don't like and cannot trust. Every day of my career and life, there have been conflicts needing to be addressed. And after all of these years and all these conflicts here is what I have learned.

1.

Conflict is necessary. We are involved in it to varying degrees every day. Not all conflicts are the same. It is important to learn this. Categories of conflict exist and how you handle them varies.

• There is the category of issues as light weight as agreeing on the right place to do lunch. You want BBQ, I want Chinese. Maybe on a little higher level, I need you to stay over tonight and you have a tee time after work. I look at these as binary issues, a simple yes or no resolves it. However if it reoccurs, if they become chronic, there might be a deeper problem.
• That problem may be the category of miss matched expectations. Your expectations are not the same as my expectations. We may have different by-in levels. This category can cause some serious heartburn. For example, you feel you have succeeded in preforming you job over and above what is required while I feel like you are barely making the grade. That’s a real problem. This one does not get resolved with a simple yes or no decision. Expectations need to be defined, communicated, and measured.
• Then there is the special category of emotional conflict that is most difficult to resolve. Often they are never resolved. For example, you cannot fix a clash of personalities. It is as if the genetic makeup of these two people does not allow them to like each other. You are never going to get them to like each other. You have to learn other work-a-rounds. Maybe one of the two needs to get a different seat on the bus or get off the bus altogether.

2.

For most types of conflict, it is important to remember there are often multiple ways of resolving it and to that end, defining what the conflict really is is key. Conflicts can be puzzles. There are many ways to solve them and your job is to learn all the pieces and how they fit together. Ask a lot of questions. How many times I have screwed this up? Lots. I thought the conflict I was working through was this when it turned out to be that.

3.

You have to learn to accept that not all conflict gets resolved. You have to get comfortable with ambiguity. As I said, sometimes you have to accept a common, albeit uneasy, peace.

4.

You don't have to learn to love conflict. But you have to learn to handle it. Conflict is not a bad word. It is necessary part of life. For example, anytime we are sitting at a sporting event, we are watching humans in conflict. That can be enjoyable, particularly if you team is winning.

Not all but most new managers share a tendency to want to avoid conflict. Some do so at all costs. I guess we all want to be loved by everybody. So we don’t want to risk pissing off anyone with a decision we’ve made. However, I can make this prediction: If you don’t learn to deal with conflict, if you don’t develop tools to deal with the various types of conflicts, your career as manager or leader will be short lived.

Daniel Goleman tells us over and over again in his books, having the tools to deal with and resolve conflicts show high Emotional Quotient and this is a great predictor of success.